Hopes that the internet can improve teaching may at last be bearing fruit

I have several criticisms of the points made in this article.

“Maths “is social now,” says Kami Thordarson, as the 10-year-olds in the 5th-grade class she teaches at Santa Rita Elementary School huddle round their laptops to solve arithmetic problems…”

This juxtaposition seems strange to me. It is unclear to me how students staring at screens and working individually on arithmetic problems is particularly social. Just look at that lead photo. As a teacher of fifth graders myself, I can think of many ways in which doing math can be collaborative and social. Some of these involve technology and some of them don’t. The Khan Academy, whatever its merits for classroom teaching may be, is not a prerequisite for any of them.

“And crucial to having better teachers is evaluating them properly, hiring, firing and promoting on merit.”

First, it would be useful if you could cite evidence for this claim. Second, continuing education and professional development for teachers are persistently left out of the press’s discussions about the state and future of education in this country. It appears to be assumed that teachers are static entities that can be added to the system, subtracted from it, and measured for purposes of quality assurance. Instead, teachers—like our students—are evolving human persons who can develop and improve over time. Until the decision-makers realize that we are resources in need of cultivation and not cogs in a machine that are replaceable, we are nowhere close to having the right conversation about education.

“ “Don’t demean the profession” by implying that you can rate teachers with numbers, he says. ”

Some facets of learning and teaching can certainly be measured by numbers. However, we demean both learning and teaching when we turn grades, test scores, and teacher evaluations into ends, rather than means. More and better data is great to have, but the pursuit of it can all too easily become a distraction.

ichoosemath.wordpress.com

Sir:

The Khan academy has allowed my children to advance at their own pace in mathematics, which has turned out to be significantly faster than the lumbering mathematics program in our “high quality” school district in Washington State. We have combined the Khan Academy, math contests and math club to ensure our children have a comprehensive understanding of Math. Mr. Khan has truly leveraged the Internet for a great humanitarian purpose, as well as a lesson for other educators who want more bang for their buck. I know of no other human being who has delivered over 75 million lessons by himself—for free. My 12 year-old, seventh grader, who is now studying limits, simply refers to Salman Khan as “Awesome Khan.”

I read the description of what is going on in these classrooms, and it contradicts what KhanAcademy and the school district say they are doing. The classroom isn't "flipped." The kids are all staring at computers. If the lecture (a poor way to transfer knowledge... the ability to rewind is offset by the inability to ask questions) is watched at home and practice problems are done at home, why aren't the kids in big messy circles applying their knowledge, making connections, getting confused, making mistakes and making discoveries... in short, why are they using the classroom for learning?? They are still doing "homework!"

Learning demands engagement. Sitting in front of a computer screen can, for awhile, be engaging, but at best it is a thin engagement. External motivations like stickers, badges or grades destroy motivation and kill a love of learning. Tell the students what they have to master, then mark them on whether they master it. I say this from years of experience and success at teaching... I'm not just imagining this works, it does.

Finally, I've watched many, many of Khan's videos. They are done in one-take, they are unedited and they often contain annoying errors. They give "tricks" for solving more complex problems that lead students to a false sense of mastery. In my area, the physics videos are examples of how NOT to teach for understanding. He has clearly never read any of the work that has been done on student misconceptions and how to address them.

Given how reactionary and complacent most teachers are, it's not surprising that real innovation is coming from outside the traditional school system and it's equally unsurprising that traditional teachers will, for the most part, resist such innovation. But a solid foundation in the basics of mathematics and science (broadly, physics and chemistry) is essential for more advanced study and thinking. Today the USA - and far too many European countries - are failing to give their pupils the foundations necessary for future progress. While the approach may not lend itself seamlessly to languages, literature and history it is clearly a massive step forward. The only drawback seems to be that it requires teachers actually to engage fully with their students rather than sitting back and turning pages as is too often the case today. Of course the real threat is that many teachers simply lack the capacity to "step up to the plate" and this is perhaps why they will resist innovations like Kahn.

"Worse, says Mr Noschese, KhanAcademy’s deliberate “gamification” of learning . . . may have the “disastrous consequence” of making pupils mechanically repeat lower-level exercises to win awards, rather than formulating questions and applying concepts."

Such awards have been called "grades" for a few hundred years, and they've worked wonders. I went to a no-grades highschool for at-risk kids. The lack of pressure kept me from committing suicide, other kids from shooting heroin, and the LGBT kids from getting bashed because of who they screw, but not an enormous amount of learning got done. Still, purpose served for us whose social and personal challenges were too great for appropriate institutional learning.

Mechanical repetition by rote, i.e. memorization, provides a base to draw from in higher-order thinking. Professors memorize throughout their professional research -- ask them. And you too memorize when you come to a new job. Then a few months down the road you figure out how to do it better.

The Union head said quantifying teachers' performance demeans them. Curious. The mission of the Union is to manipulate the oldest number attendant to teaching -- salary.

People who think teachers are generally lazy half-wits who couldn't survive in a competitive market if they tried should spend some time teaching -- it's crashing hard. All the more reason to fire people who are bad at it or have stopped caring.

How To Fix The Education Problem (while pissing everybody off):

1. Fire all the teachers.

2. Increase headcount allocations to reduce class sizes.

3. Increase the base pay rate for teacher's salary by 2x or 3x.

4. Implement data-driven standards for financial incentives and disincentives to increase or decrease pay against the base rate from student achievement (or lack thereof).

4. Offset this by indexing median base pay rate against the inverse of the district's median income compared to the median income across districts. Teachers in the richest districts get X% less, those in the poorest get X% more.

5. Invite all interested applicants to apply for these more-lucrative (tho hardly wildly enriching) teaching positions. Implement a Google-style rigorous interview process.

6. Churn out the worst performers. After X years of bad reviews relative to your district peers, you no longer are a teacher and your spot is freed up for someone else with the fire to excel at the position. Expect that teaching may only be a temporary career for many.

7. Pay for it with property taxes that are progressive to the district income. The richer districts explicitly subsidize the poorer districts (both in money and in talent).

See? It's still pretty easy to solve these problems if your compromises pair up all the worst-case scenarios from both sides of the argument.

Remember when we thought TV was a great way to teach? Then came the DVDs. Now it's the internet. Same concept, teaching through a screen. Wonderful for some, not so much for others. Each has its limitations. Nothing beats real life, in the flesh teaching from a good teacher that involves interaction, Q&A.

It occurs to me that one way to offset the (somewhat facile) argument of "competition" vs "collaboration" posed by the union rep would be to make the financial incentives partly based on individual performance and partly based on school performance.

This should incentivise both individual and collaborative achievement, although one must then increase vigilance against Atlanta style gaming of the system.

Mr. Khan, please meet Mr. Kumon, but first get ready for a sticker shock when trying to equip those kids with Macs rather than pens and paper.

Since the article is exclusively about American schools, I was surprised to see the British National Flag displayed conspicuously in the photographed "MacSchool".

I'm a college student at Virginia Tech. Our lower level math courses are all on computers, so I've had first-hand experience with online education. The effectiveness of this type of learning greatly varies depending on the person. I dont think its for everybody. It would be a huge misftake to discontinue traditional teaching all together.
I have a lot more interest in learning when an actual person is talking and I don't get as distracted as easily. Online coures do allow me to move at my own pace, but in a traditional classroom you are pushed to keep up,which also teaches discipline. I have less motivation to learn from a computer even though the lessons are always clear. Interaction is key. I think society is begining to rely too heavily on computers and is over estimating their ability.

I feel that the methods followed by Khan Academy can make a huge difference to math and science teaching in primary and secondary schools in India. Much of the learning in Indian schools is by rote, with many teachers actively discouraging any trace of origniality or divergence from set methods.
The beauty of Salman Khan's method is that it makes learning math and numerate subjects fun and interactive. In a set class room situation the same lesson is dished out to forty or kids, without any consideration that two no kids are the same in comprehension and attention span. Really bright kids get bored while the slower ones are left behind by the formal system.
I hope agains hope that Kapil Sibal and his cohorts in the union ministry of education look at the Khan Academy and adopt it to Indian conditions. The present memory based learning just can not afford to continue

When push comes to shove, Khan can teach the basic facts through rote memorization. Learning the basic facts is laudable. Unfortunately, it is a small part of education. Research has shown that lecturing is one of the least effective ways for children to learn; that problem solving and hand's-on activities leave a more lasting mark and lead to a deeper understanding. The stress in education is not regurgitating facts, but in creating, applying, synthesizing, and evaluating concepts. No matter what your opinion is of using calculators in the classroom, they will be used in real life. No matter what your opinion is of googling a subject, most people will do it. No matter what standardized tests consider invaluable, for the most part it can be found in less than three minutes on your laptop. In this world of exponentially rising amounts of information, the stress is no longer on how much your can memorize. It is instead on your ability to access the needed facts to adapt them to your situation. And that requires teaching for a deeper understanding, not lecturing the basic facts.

We must not forget that we acquire knowledge not for its own sake, but as a means to some ends. What ends?

1. To be able to 'answer' the questions we encounter.
2. To be able to figure out which questions to ask.

The two ends each require the acquisition of quite different sets of knowledge and require it to be acquired and evaluated in quite different ways.

September 17?

Learning from online lecture is a new and different concept, which i support as i studied from lot of such videos. Although it is not that interactive which it should be. But the best part is one can go and see it again, as many times he likes. For doubts there should be some interactive session required. There will be nothing like social for any subject but forums make things interesting as anyone can help you with your question, but there is no reliability of answer. Need of authentic answers is must which will guide student in right direction. Let's see how long we travel in this boat, i think it will surely go to a big ship which can accommodate all.

As a high school science teacher, I would not use the Khan Academy or recommend it to my students in large part because there are just too many mistakes in the science videos I have checked. Since Mr. Khan did not major in science, it is not surprising he makes mistakes, which do not get corrected since the videos are not reviewed or edited. Perhaps his math videos are better, since he did major in math.

It would be wonderful if a journalist would ask subject specialists to review Khan Academy videos in terms of content. This is an important issue in addition to the question of how best to teach these subjects.

I think the teacher who leaves it up to a website to teach in her classroom should just be fired. Human interaction is especially important in elementary school, nothing beats real time Q&A. The children can watch these videos at home to learn additional stuff, or review things they didn't get at school, or to re-enforce what they learned, but it should never be used as a primary teaching method, substituting for real life teaching. The teacher can even review these clips herself to see if there's a more effective approach to teaching something, but then she must teach this material herself. To let a video clip do the teaching is just plain lazy. Sooner or later, the novelty of internet teaching will wear off and this too will become as effective as teaching through TV.

As for those who continue to harp on "rote learning" vs. "critical thinking skills", certain level of memorization is needed at the lower level, like the multiplication table. Unless you know that by heart, you can't do division. Many basic scientific and historical facts require memorization. You can't think critically out of a vacuum! First you must acquire some basic knowledge. Unless you remember some basic facts, you can't develop further thinking on top of those facts.

I don't know how much "midwest moderate" has watched Khan's videos. I watched the video "Why the Lattice Method works" and thought he did a fantastic job explaining it. My 3rd grader learned it in school but kept forgetting it, once he watched that video with me and learned WHY it works, he never forgets it again. Now why didn't they teach that at his school, which was supposed to teach "Critical thinking" skills?

I hope this revolution catches on in other areas of the world. I have never heard a story of this type of electronic learning working quite so well. These students are learning responsibility through personal viewing of online lectures, and they are receiving valuable learning tools from the one person that can help them most: their teacher. And, because I do not consider it too early to begin learning life skills as an elementary school student, these children are becoming accustomed to the independent learning strategies invloved with higher education.

My school district recently made the switch to a one-to-one laptop to student ratio for all high school students. The reason? We lost every single textbook from a tornado, including our building. Luckily, our school district pulled off an amazing feat and all students were able to return to school on time, no delays, though some major changes took place. Today, I attended a meeting in order to help plan some new 21st century learning and technology implements that are on the table for our new school that is being planned.

It may seem strange, unorthodox, and nontraditional to have learn using the internet and on a computer, but why completely avoid it? By watching, listening, and replaying a lecture at home students will be able to learn a lesson in their own time. Why does it make sense to learn a lecture in class, only to forget half of it and do an assignment at home? Doesn't it make more sense to devote time to practice during the day where a teacher can aid you? Isn't that what learning is? And why do we compartmentalize students by their age, when for some students that is the last thing they have in common with their peers? What if we let them learn at their own pace so they may be more engaged and motivated to learn in the classroom? It seems to me that school districts across our nation are forgetting about individualized learning environments. No, this doesn't mean technology can be completely relied on all the time for learning, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't utilize it either.

These are questions that are in the process of being answered in my school district, as they should be elsewhere too. Only time will tell.